What cap will Bagwell wear in the Hall of Fame?

It'll be the Astros. But which Astros?

We live in uncertain times, with the alternative truths and the fake news and the Texans osweilering their way into playoff oblivion. It's like we're in one of those Inception dream sequences, where cities are crumbling and streets are heaving and cracking and folding down upon themselves, and Leonard DiCaprio steals furtively from the side entrance of Trump Tower, looking intense and deeply concerned.

Is it Morning in America (again), or midnight? Maybe it's 5:15 in the afternoon, and we're all inching toward Sugar Land on the Southwest Freeway, a mere 18-wheeler with a lost load away from being stuck for hours, possibly forever! It's hard to say. No one is sure except the True Believers, the Snowflakes and the Trumpalos, and the only thing they have in common, aside from searing mutual hatred and an unassailable conviction that they are on The Right Side of History, is highly questionable taste in headgear.

Which brings me to my point.

Jeff Bagwell speaks during a rally for his Hall of Fame election in Union Station at Minute Maid Park, Monday, January 23. Note the Astros Classic cap.

Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle

In this uncertain time, with alt truths and fake news and the osweilering, Lord have mercy, the osweilering, there is one question that burns in the heart of every true Houstonian, one question that demands an answer: Which cap will Jeff Bagwell wear on his Hall of Fame plaque?

Each Baseball Hall of Fame inductee becomes the subject of a bas relief sculpture, cast in bronze, listing the honoree's accomplishments, and showing him, usually smiling, occasionally grimacing, wearing a team cap (so far, the only female Hall of Famer is Effa Manley, owner of the Negro League Newark Eagles. She is depicted sans ballcap). The plaques hang in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Sure, sure, Bags is going to wear an Astros cap. That's obvious: Bagwell spent his entire major league career in Houston. The 'Stros acquired him in a 1990 late season trade with the Boston Red Sox. The Sox were in a pennant hunt, and needed relief pitching. The Astros were going nowhere, and sought prospects.

The Red Sox got Larry Anderson, a serviceable reliever, and something of a Deep Thinker. Anderson is less known for his pitching than such ponderings as, "Was Robin Hood's mother known as Mother Hood?" and "Why do people sing 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame' at the stadium when they're already there?"

Jeff Bagwell is best known for hitting 449 home runs and winning 1991 National League Rookie of the Year Aware, the 1994 Most Valuable Player Award, a Gold Glove and three Silver Sluggers. Many experts consider Anderson-for-Bagwell the most lopsided trade in baseball history. These experts are clearly unmoved by Anderson's burning question, "If it's 'sour cream,' how come it has an expiration date?"

During Bagwell's fifteen seasons in Houston, the Astros wore no fewer than five uniform caps. This doesn't count batting practice caps, special event caps, or "throwback" caps (briefly, before the Astrodome, the Houstons were called "The Colt .45s." Their jerseys featured an elaborate, chain-stitched six-shooter across the chest, a plume of smoke curling from its barrel to form the "C" in "Colts." The cap kept it simple: navy blue, emblazoned with a proud ".45s" in Gulf Oil orange. Every once in a while, the 'Stros trot out the old Colts uniform, mostly as a subtle public service. It's a handy reminder that like rats, mattress stores, and unlicensed drivers, you're never more than a few feet away from a handgun in Houston.)

The Colt .45s, the Astros' predecessors, guns blazing.

Photo: hc, HC staff

Five caps, every one of them a crucial tie to Bagwell's illustrious career. Start with The Classic – navy body and brim, orange squatchee (the little button at the top) and a serifed white "H", rampant on an orange star – that Bags wore in his Rookie of the Year season. It's a magnificent cap, a cap for the ages, a cap that the students at baseball uniform design academies all over the country still study with a mixture of reverence and awe (there really any baseball design academies, but there should be. And they should be studying The Classic. It's a heckuva cap).

In 1991, when Bagwell was named the National League Rookie of the Year, he wore the Astros Classic cap.

Then there's The Shooting Star. There are actually two versions of this cap. In the original, the body, brim, and squatchee are navy, the logo – a star, leaning slightly to the right, the left lines open and extended to give the illusion of movement – is rendered in metallic gold. It was introduced for the 1994 season. A couple of years later, Astros owner and enthusiastic Baylor University booster Drayton McLane introduced a second version of The Shooting Star, its brim and squatchee sparkling in the logo's metallic gold. Think of it as a Saturday night in Waco: not as fun as you'd expected, and trying way, way, way too hard. Bagwell won his MVP in a Shooting Star cap.

In 1997, when the Astros clinched the Central Division Championship, Bagwell hoisted Craig Biggio in the celebration. They wore the Shooting Star.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool, Houston Chronicle

There are a couple of urban legends about the Shooting Star. When MLB Properties, the people who oversaw the Astros 1994 rebranding, first unveiled the prototype uniforms to the Astros braintrust, McLane, good Baptist Sunday School teaching, Baylor Bear loving Wal-Mart tycoon that he was, supposedly wrinkled his nose and said, "It looks a little too 'Notre Dame' to me." The MLB people convinced him to go with the blue and gold, but he wasn't happy about it.

Another story claims that The Shooting Star became enormously popular with the Crips street gang. Crips wear blue. Their main rival, the Bloods, use a five-pointed star as a primary logo. The broken star on a blue background was interpreted as a sign of Crips superiority over their ruddy enemies. I have heard this story dozens of times. There's no way I can corroborate it. I'm a fifty-four-year old white guy. I don't know Thug Life from a baloney sandwich.

Which brings us to The Ballpark at Enron Juicebox, and the Cho-Choo Astros. The ballpark was built on the site of the former Houston railroad terminal. In what has to be the least Houston bit of building design in history, the lovely granite, terracotta, and limestone terminal building was not torn down, but incorporated into the ballpark design. In step with the pleasing old-timey and bona fide feel of the old-new ballpark, and perhaps sniffing some lingering wisps of locomotive fumes, owner McLane announced the Astros would take the field in new colors. Had he been thinking, he would have gone with granite, terracotta, and limestone. Instead, he opted for "brick, coal, and sand." This isn't the oddest set of names for a Houston sports team's color palette: no one is ever going to top Texan owner Bob McNair's rambling "Spirit of the Bull" discourse back in 2006, and his declaration that his team's colors would be "Deep Steel Blue, Battle Red, and Liberty White." It was a weird speech.

Everything about this era in Astros history was wrong. The colors were wrong. The pinstripes on the uniforms were wrong. The mascots – a guy sitting in a choo-choo train, a guy dressed as a Civil War officer, firing a cannon and calling himself "General Admission, and an enormous jack rabbit, lurching about, terrifying children and old people – were very, very wrong.

All of it fit the train motif, but had nothing to do with the retro hip, Space Age bachelor pad vibe that "Astros" conjures. "Astros" is mock turtlenecks and The Ventures playing "Walk, Don't Run." It's ribeye steaks and the Corvette Sting Ray. It's Orbit, the creepy green space alien, and grounds crews in faux spacesuits and Judge Roy Hofheinz ambling through his private suite in the Astrodome, every room decorated in what can only be called "proto-Trump."

McLane actually thought about changing the team nickname to something more railroady, taking out trademarks on "Houston Wildcatters" and "South Texas Diesels." Mercifully, cooler heads prevailed.

But I digress. Again.

The Choo-Choo Astros wore two caps, a brick number, with coal and sand trim, and a black one, with sand and brick accents. The club made its first and still only World Series appearance in those caps, Bagwell, debilitated by the arthritic shoulder that would end his career, managing just one hit in eight at bats, as the Diesels, er, Astros, were swept by the Chicago White Sox.So there you have it. One club, five caps. Which one does our newest Hall of Famer choose? Which one best represents the bond between that silent, sold slugger, and the legions who cheered for him?

My money is on The Classic. Bags is a traditional guy, and The Classic is a traditional look. The Classic is the look of a thousand Gulf Coast summer nights, orange sunlight dissolving into midnight blue swelter, construction cranes and steel frames, bathed in white light, rising up from a skyline that's never quite finished. It's filled with unexpected promise, and unimagined surprises, just like that taciturn Connecticut kid with the weird sumo crouch batting stance and the peerless ability to make contact and the uncanny skill at taking the extra base. He's the best player the club ever produced — no disrespect to Craig Biggio, Cesar Cedeño, or Jose Altuve, our Hall of Famer in waiting (who, if he sticks around, will almost certainly surpass Bagwell as Our Greatest Astro). Bagwell deserves the best cap.

Even the Snowflakes and the Trumpalos can agree on that.

Cort McMurray is a Houston-area businessman and a frequent contributor to Gray Matters.

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